SAM LONGWORTH

STEWARTS

An integral member of Stewarts’ top-set family team for the past ten years, partner Sam Longworth is proud of its ‘longstanding place as the standout firm for high value, international, complex divorce work in London’. 2017 has been especially busy, he says, with four reported cases under his belt and several more in arbitration. He says many clients — including a ‘large number’ of Americans — are referred from top city firms and M&A lawyers with clients encountering ‘large-scale, life-changing wealth’. He’s also often referred to take over ‘seemingly intractable cases where the client has become frustrated with a lack of progress and strategic direction’. He’s glad to see out-of-court solutions gaining favour: ‘Arbitration is finally starting to gather momentum in its true and proper form: private court. Practitioners are coming round to its potential to provide a private, dynamic environment to resolve disputes… It removes the leverage that comes with court delays — now years not months — and the risk of publicity’ (a sizeable bonus, he says, given the ‘the huge increase in press attention on divorce and related stories’). Clients rarely enjoy long-term relationships with divorce lawyers — but it doesn’t matter. ‘We make it our responsibility to act in a way which allows them to move forward with their lives without a “divorce hangover” — emotional, financial, or otherwise.’